Rode Ironsides Court Farm BoarderX Track today with Raph, Simon, Duncan and Morris. The ‘Orange Run’, as it’s known, is a comfortable bx track with the usual rollers and berms. I’m not really into riding boarderx but it was a nice ride, and a great place to be on such a nice day.
My last video, strangely the most successful on youtube getting loads more views than all the others. Glad I don’t bother making videos anymore, there are a lot better film makers out there…
Seven days, 120 hours, 7200 minutes. This time next week we’ll be kicking off at ‘Dave’, the first UK downhill Mountainboarding competition since 2005. Everything I’m seeing is telling me that Downhill is coming of age. More people are riding with brakes, and not because they haven’t developed the skills to go fast but because they want to do more on a board than you can without a brake. People are going further, higher, steeper, and longer, and they are doing out there on their own. It’s time to start getting them all together.
This year we have ‘Dave’, a pretty cool little downhill track and comp in it’s own right but essentially a test case and our first attempt at getting all those downhill-orientated people into competition riding. We already have leads on future DH comps in the Lake District and Scotland. All we have to do is get enough people into downhilling to make it worthwhile. So, if you’re thinking about coming to ‘Dave’, take a look at all this and do it.
Been updating and doing a bit of redesign on mountainboarding.uk.com to try to decrease the bounce rate. Still needs a lot of work with the big square buttons at the bottom to get visitors to realise that they go somewhere and click on them. Also need to finish the hundred or so landing/capture pages, but that’s for another day.
I’ve been updating the Ironsides website to try to improve its ranking, bounce rate (currently 37%) and more importantly conversion rate.
I’ve also been experimenting with marketing mountainboarding lessons by putting adverts in sites like Gumtree, Vivastreet, Ebay, and Facebook Marketplace. It’ll be interesting to see how well it works. The next stage will be an online booking form on the website to see what that does to conversions, although I won’t actually be able to measure it.
Out To Grass BoarderX track ridden in total darkness.
Jasper’s vid about learning mountainboarding
I’ve been riding my noSno brake board with nine inch wheels on the front and eight inch wheels on the back for a few weeks now. All my hopes about the possible advantages of such a set-up have been proved right. A board with the weight on the front for smashing through things, still be able to use disc brakes, and lighter wheels on the back so I can kick it around to get those tight corners, and a lighter board overall.
This is a great set-up for single-track brake-board riding, and now I’ve added T2 tyres on the front wheels and can get some proper slides going, adding to my speed control and overall fun.
ATBA-UK International Series BoarderX Qualification
I’ve been updating the BX Qualification paperwork ready for for Round 3 of the ATBA-UK International Series at Out To Grass next weekend. We’re introducing a ‘small final’ for those who come third and fourth in the semi-final to race off for places 5th, 6th, 7th and 8th in the rankings.
And, while I’m on the subject, if anyone knows anyone who is good at programming spreadsheets, tell them they can have my soul for a few hours work.
Really cool night time session on May Hill, which I’ve known about for years but never ridden. Old stomping ground of NASA but I bet it hasn’t seen four wheels in a few years. It’s a pretty nice spot with some long runs. I forgot my GPS which means I didn’t record any of the runs for the map.
I rode my noSno, which I’m getting back into more and more, especially now I’ve got T1’s on the back and T2’s on the front so I can slide it around. Will definitely have to have another ride there in the autumn, and maybe a proper on-foot scouting mission to get all the runs marked out.